Perspectives on Safety

Our Perspectives on Safety section features expert viewpoints on current themes in patient safety, including interviews and written essays published monthly. Annual Perspectives highlight vital and emerging patient safety topics.

Interview

Dr. Starke is Professor of Pediatrics–Infectious Disease at Baylor College of Medicine and previously served as Infection Control Officer at Texas Children's Hospital. We spoke with him about "presenteeism" (coming to work while ill) in health care and its impact on provider and patient safety.

Interview

Dave deBronkart, known as e-Patient Dave, is a co-founder and co-chair of the Society for Participatory Medicine and coauthor of Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook. We spoke with him about engaging patients in their care and allowing patients to access their medical records.

Interview

Dr. Pittet is Director of the Infection Control Programme and WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety at the University of Geneva Hospitals, Switzerland. We spoke with him about hand hygiene in health care, including how to implement culture change and improve safety.

Interview

Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Johns Hopkins Quality and Safety Research Group. He may be best known for having led the Michigan Keystone project, which used checklists and other interventions to markedly reduce catheter-associated bloodstream infections in ICUs throughout the state. For this work and more, he received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. We asked him to speak with us about checklists and other thoughts about the science of improving patient safety.

Interview

Sanjay Saint, MD, MPH, is Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Saint's research has focused on reducing health care–associated infections, with a particular focus on preventing catheter-related urinary tract infections (UTIs). We asked him to speak with us about how research on UTI prevention provides broader lessons for patient safety.

Perspective

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the most common hospital-acquired infection, accounting for 40% of all hospital-acquired infections. More than 80% of these infections are attributable to use of an indwelling urethral catheter.(1) Catheter-acquired urinary infections (cUTIs) have received significantly less attention than other health care–acquired infections, such as surgical site infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and bacteremia.

Perspective

with commentary by Gary A. Noskin, MD, MRSA and Patient Safety, April 2008

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has received a great deal of media attention over the past few months following the release of a study indicating that, on an annual basis, approximately 94,000 patients develop serious MRSA infections resulting in 18,650 deaths.
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Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus
Perspective
by Gary A. Noskin, MD
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has received a great deal of media attention over the past few months following the release of a study indicating that, on an annual basis, approximately 94,000 patients develop serious MRSA infections resulting in 18,650 deaths.(

Perspective

The voices of patients are often missing from discussions of the impact of medical errors and adverse events. Ms. Constance Lehfeldt is a former nurse who developed a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection, which ultimately led to a devastating series of complications. Connie bravely describes her story, with understated eloquence, in the video interview.
The voices of patients are often missing from discussions of the impact of medical errors and adverse events. Ms. Constance Lehfeldt is a former nurse who developed a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection, which ultimately led to a devastating series of complications.

Perspective

with commentary by Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, The Transformation of Patient Safety at the VA, September 2006

Five years after the landmark Crossing the Quality Chasm report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the quality and safety of health care in the United States remains far from ideal.(1) It is easy to feel pessimistic. Can health care organizations really...